Huckleberry Tea

Mornin' y'all!  Guess what?  We spent last week up at Yellowstone National Park!  I set up all my blog posts before we left : )  Our trip was AMAZING and I'll share a few pics at the bottom of this post if you're interested, but our Yellowstone trip also factored into my card for today:

Time Out Challenges wants a card featuring a favorite (or favourite, if you're fancy) beverage, so I had to make one to coordinate with the tin of huckleberry tea I bought while we were at Yellowstone.  I'm actually sipping my first cup of this as I type; it reminds me a lot of Republic of Tea's blackberry sage flavor.  Anyway, here's the challenge graphic:

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tea Shoppe
Ink:  Gorgeous Grape, Garden Green
Paper:  Gorgeous Grape, Thick Basic White, Hydrangea Hill DSP, Garden Green DSP
Accessories:  Stylish Shapes dies, Perennial Postage dies, Dimensionals, Pearls of Beauty

Keep on scrolling if you want to see a few pictures from our trip.  Not a lot, just some from the first couple of days.

I had to get this tea towel (I like to hang a towel on my oven door) to match the huckleberry tea, and I also got huckleberry honey and jam which I haven't tried yet.

We left out super early last Sunday morning and drove to a little town in Wyoming whose name I don't remember, but on the way in the middle of nowhere (like 40 miles from the nearest gas station middle of nowhere) I found a used book store!  And they had lots of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, plus a stack of Hank the Cowdog books for Ryan!

We had dinner at a place called Nana's Bowling and Bakery, and we did indeed go bowling and buy some cookies the size of Ryan's face.  Plus Ryan got to ride a mechanical bull.

On Memorial Day, we drove in to Grand Teton National Park and isn't this GORGEOUS.  I did nothing to edit this picture other than shrink it down a bit to post on the blog.

We took a boat across Jenny Lake, then hiked about a bazillion miles back to where we started.  Late in the afternoon, we drove further north into Yellowstone.

And we saw elk!  With teefers!

And here's a shaggy buffalo for you, which Ryan insists is a bison but I will say buffalo because that was my high school mascot.  We were less than 15 minutes away from our hotel when we had the coolest thing happen:

This grizzly bear just popped out of the woods next to the road, less than twenty yards from us!  It's the only grizzly we saw during our time in Yellowstone but I never imagined we'd be this close (we were safely in the car).  I will be going through more of our pics today so I'll share just a few highlights this week, but for now, I need to get Ryan sunscreened up so he can go to his first day of farm camp.  Cheers!

To a Tea

Mornin' y'all!  I've got my first cuppa steeping right now and of course I'm making tea to go with my tea card today : )

I love the pink and teal color combination from last week's Inspired By... challenge so I had to give it another go even if the challenge is closed:

I ended up using Summer Splash with mostly Pink Pirouette and just a little Pretty in Pink, doing a Pretty in Pink card base was just too much pink for me.  Next up is the CAS Colours & Sketches sketch:

I happened to see the teacup trio stamp in Tea Shoppe and thought it would be great for the circles on the sketch.  I added the Pretty in Pink strip to ground the teacups so they wouldn't be free floating in space, I just felt like they needed that grounding.

That's it for now, peeps.  I'm going to enjoy the rest of my cuppa while I check out some blogs, and then I fully intend to make another cup : )  My blood type is tea positive.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tea Shoppe
Ink:  Summer Splash, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Pink Pirouette, Pretty in Pink, Basic White
Accessories:  Dimensionals

Primrose Tea

You know what I love?  I love it when I get an idea for a card and it all comes together in oh, ten minutes, and I like the result.  Lucky for me, that happened today!  (Also lucky for me, I'm starting to get over this stomach bug malarkey.  Yay!)

Yeah, the thing that took the longest for this card was cutting out the teacup.  Other than that, super easy-peasy.  The sketch is from Freshly Made Sketches, I loooove this kinda sketch!

And the color combo is courtesy of Dynamic Duos:

At first I was looking for some So Saffron DSP, but then I found that Summer Starfruit pattern from Patio Party and it was big enough for a card front layer, so I just went with it.  I kinda like the small floral pattern with the teacup anyway, so that was kismet.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies (all SU!):
Stamps:  Tea Shoppe
Ink:  Primrose Petals, Early Espresso
Paper:  Primrose Petals, Whisper White, Patio Party DSP
Accessories:  Primrose Petals stitched satin ribbon, Dimensionals

Olivia's Baby Book

Not too long after I started stamping, I got the idea to make baby books for a couple of friends of mine for their baby showers.  Since then, I've done ten, and I've got one more that's 80% finished (I just need to find out if the baby's a boy or a girl).  I do one layout for each month of the year, plus layouts for the baby's birth and first birthday.  Add in the first and last pages, and each book is 30 pages.  They take me at least a couple of months to do, so I don't do them for very many people.  And I won't sell them either, because honestly, no one would pay what I would want to charge for them given how much time they take, never mind the cost of supplies.

So here's the one I just finished up for my SIL and her new daughter, Olivia.  If you want a complete supply list, check out my SCS gallery here.  Jill is doing the nursery in what my mom calls Strawberry Shortcake colors--pink, hot pink, and lime green, so that's what I started with.  The die cut alphabet I used is by Sizzix and I've had it since I graduated from college and it's long retired :)  Click on any of the pictures to see it bigger.

 Stamps:  Mixed Bunch, Papillon Potpourri

Stamps:  Baby Prints

Stamps:  Make a Mitten (retired), Snow Swirled

Stamps:  Artistic Etchings, Carte Postale (retired), En Francais

Stamps:  Celtic Knots (retired), Tag Time (retired)

Stamps:  Announcements (retired)...I did this one several months ago, had I known Rain or Shine was coming out I woulda waited so I could have used that!

Stamps:  Tea Shoppe...I thought a mother-daughter tea party theme would be cute?

Stamps:  By the Seashore

Stamps:  Land That I Love (retired)

 Stamps:  Bronc Buster (retired), Wanted (retired)...Olivia was born in Texas, she needed a cowgirl layout :)

Stamps:  Fruit & Flowers, One Smart Cookie

Stamps:  Googly Ghouls (retired)

Stamps:  Wonderfall, Falling Leaves (retired)

Stamps:  Reindeer Print

Stamps:  Crazy for Cupcakes (retired), coordinating cupcake wheel (retired)

So excited this one is done!  I've even made a card to go with it, so now I just need to get it in the mail.  Thanks for stopping by!

A Cup of Thanks

Happy Boxing Day!  I think that's much more of a thing here in England than it is in the States, but whatever.  Each year I like to make some post-Christmas thank you cards that kind of coordinate with whatever I did for Christmas cards, so here is this year's tea-inspired thanks:

I've used SO much of my pack of Be of Good Cheer DSP that I had to break out some of the In Color DSP stack for the background layer.  But using up the Christmas DSP is a good thing 'cause I've got so very much retired stuff too!  I think this card looks a little better IRL than in the picture though...the glimmer paper helps separate the tea cup from the same color DSP better in person.

Today's card is brought to you by Freshly Made Sketches.

And now I think I'll go downstairs and make myself a cuppa while I catch up on some recorded TV shows.  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies (all SU!):
Stamps:  Tea Shoppe
Ink:  Cherry Cobbler, Midnight Muse
Paper:  Midnight Muse, Very Vanilla, Champagne Glimmer, Be of Good Cheer & In Color DSP
Accessories:  Dimensionals

Happy Christmas Teacups

I've been holding out to post these cards ON Christmas Day and now I finally can!  These were our Christmas cards this year...I wanted to do something that reflected Christmas in England, so I went with teacups!

At first I was going to have the center teacup stamped in the opposite color, then cut out and popped up like in the card on the right, but I ended up deciding that was too much work so I went with all 3 teacups one color.

About half the cards were red, the other half green, and I used 6 different patterns from the Be of Good Cheer paper pack.  Unfortunately these cards were rather adhesive-intensive so I am once again completely OUT of Snail.  Oops!

The card layout is based on the first-ever sketch challenge at Fab Friday.  I stamped one of the longer sentiments from More Merry Messages on the inside of each card.  Happy Christmas!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Tea Shoppe, More Merry Messages
Ink:  Cherry Cobbler, Gumball Green, Midnight Muse
Paper:  Cherry Cobbler, Gumball Green, Midnight Muse, Very Vanilla, Be of Good Cheer DSP, Champagne Glimmer Paper
Accessories:  Circle punch (I forget what size I used), SAMJ 'cause I love it